Activisionhttp://www.adweek.com/taxonomy/term/2996/all
enAd of the Day: Meet the Crazy Cameraman Who Films Every Kill in Call of Dutyhttp://www.adweek.com/news/advertising-branding/ad-day-meet-crazy-cameraman-who-films-every-kill-call-duty-162510
Sam Thielman<img src="http://www.adweek.com/files/imagecache/node-detail/news_article/cod-killcameraman-hed-2015.jpg"> <p>
One of the great mean-spirited pleasures of multiplayer gaming is knowing that whenever you finally seize the day and blow your enemy to smithereens, he or she has to watch it on instant replay.</p>
<p>
But who does the difficult work of chronicling that demise and then shoving it in the person&#39;s face? Have you ever thought about that?</p>
<p>
No, you haven&#39;t. Because you&#39;re selfish.</p>
<p>
But Call of Duty has. Randall Higgins (played in 72andSunny&#39;s ad below by <a href="http://robhuebel.com/" target="_blank">Rob Huebel</a>, late of both Amazon&#39;s Golden Globe-winning Transparent and, of course, Adult Swim&#39;s offbeat drama TV parody Children&#39;s Hospital) is just such a &quot;killcameraman.&quot; And he has a lot to say about his difficult, underappreciated (again: we blame you) job, taking time out of his busy schedule to walk us through the new DLC pack, Havoc, that&#39;s coming out for Activision&#39;s new Call of Duty game, Advanced Warfare.<br />
<br />
<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="367" src="//www.youtube.com/embed/xOFhmegFLUk?rel=0" width="652"></iframe><br />
<br />
We broke down the way the DLC rollouts work <a href="http://www.adweek.com/news/advertising-branding/inside-massive-campaign-behind-call-duty-advanced-warfare-160993">back in October</a>&mdash;it&#39;s a great way to keep consumer dollars coming in without requiring them to sign up for a service (which is a hard sell to the generation that loves CoD). And this one sounds fun: exo-suited zombies, murderous clowns and a nuclear reactor are just a few of the attractions.</p>
<p>
Also there&#39;s a gun called the Widowmaker (&quot;They don&#39;t call it the Friendmaker for a reason,&quot; Higgins observes). And there&#39;s <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7lL1CW140FQ" target="_blank">that cool Raconteurs song,</a> too.</p>
<p>
Anyway, think of somebody besides yourself for once. Like Randall.</p>
<p>
<strong>CREDITS</strong><br />
Client: Activision <br />
Project: &quot;Randall Higgins: KillCameraman&quot;<br />
Agency: 72andSunny<br />
<br />
Activision<br />
CEO Activision Publishing: Eric Hirshberg<br />
EVP, Chief Marketing Officer: Tim Ellis<br />
SVP, Consumer Marketing: Todd Harvey<br />
VP, Consumer Marketing: Matt Small<br />
Director, Consumer Marketing: Mike Pelletier<br />
Manager, Consumer Marketing: David Cushman</p>
<p>
72andSunny Team<br />
Chief Executive Officer: John Boiler<br />
Chief Strategy Officer: Matt Jarvis<br />
Chief Creative Officer: Glenn Cole<br />
Group Creative Director: Frank Hahn<br />
Creative Director/Designer: Rey Andrade<br />
Creative Director/Writer: Josh Fell<br />
Lead Designer: Jeremy Wirth<br />
Lead Writer: Jed Cohen<br />
Designer: Sean Matthews<br />
Writer: Kako Mendez<br />
Chief Production Officer: Tom Dunlap<br />
Director of Film Production: Sam Baerwald<br />
Executive Film Producer: Dan Ruth<br />
Film Production Assistant: Alissa Stevens<br />
Group Brand Director: Mike Parseghian<br />
Brand Director: Simon Hall<br />
Brand Manager: Justin Gonzaga<br />
Brand Coordinator: Brian Kim<br />
Director of Business Affairs: Michelle Mckinney<br />
Group Business Affairs Director: Amy Jacobsen<br />
Business Affairs Manager: Kelly Ventrelli<br />
Business Affairs Coordinator: Amy Shah<br />
Co-Director of Strategy: Bryan Smith<br />
Strategy Director: John Graham<br />
Sr. Strategist: Daniel Teng</p>
<p>
Production Partners</p>
<p>
Production Company: Hungry Man<br />
Director: Wayne McClammy<br />
Director of Photography: Bryan Newman<br />
Executive Producer: Dan Duffy<br />
Executive Producer: Mino Jarjoura<br />
Producer: Dave Bernstein</p>
<p>
Editorial: Final Cut<br />
Editor: Crispin Struthers<br />
Editor: Christopher Amos<br />
Executive Producer: Saima Awan<br />
Sr. Producer: Suzy Ramirez</p>
<p>
VFX: MPC<br />
LA OFFICE<br />
Head of Production: Andrew Bell<br />
Executive Producer: Karen Anderson<br />
Sr. VFX Producer: Carla Attanasio<br />
Creative Director/VFX Supervisor: Paul O&#39;Shea<br />
3D Lead: Corinne DeOrsay<br />
2D Lead: Paul O&#39;Shea</p>
<p>
2D Artists:<br />
Flame: Vincent Blin<br />
Robert Moggach<br />
Nuke: Brinton Jaecks<br />
Toma Bowen<br />
James Stellar<br />
Syam Karumathil<br />
Matte Painting: Eric Mattson<br />
Roger Kupelian<br />
Ivo Horvat</p>
<p>
3D Artists:<br />
Modeling: Steven Browning<br />
Toshi Sakamaki<br />
Texture: Joseph Langmuir<br />
Toshi Sakamaki<br />
Animation: Jeffrey Lee<br />
Rigging: Steward Burris<br />
Ian Wilson<br />
Lighting: Kristen Eggleston<br />
Huisoo Lee<br />
Corinne DeOrsay<br />
FX: Nate Usiak<br />
Nate Lapinski<br />
Janina Overlay<br />
Integration Supervisor: Michael Lori</p>
<p>
BANGALORE OFFICE<br />
Match-move/Tracking:: Dheeraj Hebbar<br />
Earnest Victor<br />
Jacob T. Oommen<br />
Rajendra Malla<br />
Sindhuja B<br />
Yashaswi Salandri<br />
Ravindra Burla<br />
Roto: Alex J.<br />
Gaytree Dhangar<br />
Lokanath Sahu<br />
Mithilesh. G<br />
Monalisa Xess<br />
Roy Nukala Srikrishna<br />
Shaikh Abdul Adil<br />
Shalwin Shaiju</p>
<p>
Cleanup/Prep: Amresh Kumar<br />
Karthick Muthu kumar<br />
Rajkumar C.</p>
<p>
Telecine: MPC LA<br />
Executive Producer: Amanda Ornelas<br />
Producer: Summer McCloskey<br />
Colorist: Ricky Gausis</p>
<p>
Mix: Lime Studios<br />
Mixer: Rohan Young<br />
Assistant Mixer: Jeff Malen<br />
Producer: Susie Boyajan</p>
<p>
Sound Design: The Formosa Group<br />
Supervising Sound Editor: Per Hallberg, M.P.S.E.<br />
1st Assistant Sound Editor: Philip D. Morrill</p>
<p>
Specialty Costumes and Weapons: Legacy Effects<br />
Supervisor: John Rosengrant<br />
On Set Technicians: Michael Manzel<br />
Tracey Roberts<br />
Trevor Hensley<br />
Zombie Make Up Effects: Bruce Spaulding Fuller<br />
Production Coordinator: Damon Weathers</p>
<p>
Finishing: Method Studios<br />
Producer: Karena Ajamian<br />
Online Artist: Jason Franks<br />
Graphics Assistant: Marina Moz&eacute;e<br />
Graphics Assistant: Mikhail Chechelnitskiy</p>
Advertising & Branding72andsunnyActivisionAd of The DayCall of DutyGamingSam ThielmanAgencyFri, 23 Jan 2015 19:02:08 +0000162510 at http://www.adweek.comInstagram's Video Ads Are Finally Live, and Here Are 4 From Major Brandshttp://www.adweek.com/news/technology/instagrams-video-ads-are-live-big-brands-board-161081
Garett Sloane<img src="http://www.adweek.com/files/imagecache/node-detail/news_article/instagram-disney-hed-2014.jpg"> <p>
After <a href="http://www.adweek.com/news/technology/instagram-video-ads-are-coming-soon-157308" target="_blank">six months of testing</a>, Instagram&#39;s video ads are officially here.</p>
<p>
Instagram, owned by Facebook, has deals to show 15-second autoplay spots from Disney, Activision, Lancome, Banana Republic and CW. The ads will start appearing today and roll out over the coming weeks.&nbsp;<span style="line-height: 20.3999996185303px;">For instance, Disney is promoting its film, Big Hero 6, with a video showing animated characters posing as if they were taking selfies.</span></p>
<p>
&quot;We felt like we wanted to step up in a big way for Big Hero 6,&quot; said Anthy Price, svp of media at Disney. &quot;And we&#39;re excited about video.&quot;</p>
<p>
Instagram has been <a href="http://mashable.com/2014/07/15/kevin-systrom-looks-at-every-ad-on-instagram/" target="_blank">unusually hands-on</a> with brands in regards to its static image ads, which launched last year. And the same is true with video. The company reviews all clips to ensure that they contain mostly fresh content, fit the vibe of the platform and are not simply repurposed TV/Web commercials.&nbsp;</p>
<p>
Video has become an important part of mobile advertising, and Instagram rivals like Tumblr and Snapchat recently launched similar ad products. Snapchat, the mobile messaging app with a youthful audience, sold its first video ad this month to Universal Pictures, which <a href="http://www.adweek.com/news/technology/check-out-snapchats-first-ad-universal-pictures-160866" target="_blank">promoted a trailer for the movie Ouija.</a></p>
<p>
But it can be a delicate dance, introducing potentially intrusive ads to an app that had been commercial free. Some early Instagram advertisers that tried out the sponsored images heard negative comments from users who didn&#39;t enjoy the salesy activity in their feeds.&nbsp;<span style="line-height: 20.3999996185303px;">Still, Instagram is sharing feedback that digs deeper than comment sentiment and looks at brand awareness and ad recall, which the company claims has been </span><a href="http://www.adweek.com/news/technology/instagram-ads-are-getting-instant-recall-157595" style="line-height: 20.3999996185303px;" target="_blank">positive on all fronts.</a><span style="line-height: 20.3999996185303px;">&nbsp;</span><span style="line-height: 20.3999996185303px;">And the video advertisers going live this morning shared the opinion that it was best to be first, bolstering their brands&#39; reputations as innovators.</span></p>
<p>
&quot;It wasn&#39;t a hard decision for us,&quot; said Brian Chang, assistant vp of media at Lancome USA. &quot;We, as a brand, wanted to take advantage of being first to market.&quot;</p>
<p>
Lancome is promoting a new fragrance and mascara. Its agency, DigitasLBi, was the go-between with Instagram, and Lancome&#39;s entry into the video ad deal wasn&#39;t finalized until this week.&nbsp;<span style="line-height: 20.3999996185303px;">Therefore, the brand&#39;s team had to rush to complete video creative. Others, like Activision, which is promoting Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare, had months to prepare.</span></p>
<p>
<strong>Omnicom-Instagram Deal Bears Fruit</strong></p>
<p>
For its Instagram ad, Activision is sharing a 15-second clip from a longer live-action video that will debut today on its Facebook page, which has 23 million fans.</p>
<p>
&quot;Our audience is becoming increasingly mobile-centric, and Instagram is a mobile-centric platform,&quot; said Jonathan Anastas, head of digital and social media at Activision. &quot;So it&#39;s an important part of the marketing mix.&quot;</p>
<p>
Anastas said he expects the ad to initially reach 2 million users, and after a lift from likes and shares, millions more will see it and drive traffic to the video on Facebook.</p>
<p>
&quot;One of the great advantages of working on the marketing team for Call of Duty is that gamers broadly&mdash;and our target audience specifically&mdash;just inhale content,&quot; Anastas said.</p>
<p>
So, he&#39;s not worried about negative feedback from showing sponsored videos. Activision works with Omnicom Media Group, which inked an exclusive, <a href="http://www.adweek.com/news/advertising-branding/instagram-omnicom-deal-actually-worth-40-million-156200" target="_blank">$40 million deal</a> with Instagram last spring that gives the media agency&#39;s clients first dibs on new ad products.&nbsp;</p>
<p>
Banana Republic&#39;s first video ad is a look behind the scenes at the company with sketches of holiday fashions. The video flips through the sketches in fast-motion, using a time-manipulation effect made popular by <a href="http://www.adweek.com/news/technology/12-marketers-already-experimenting-hyperlapse-159762" target="_blank">Hyperlapse, Instagram&#39;s first standalone app.</a></p>
<p>
&quot;We are targeting women because these are fashion illustrations and the focus is on women&#39;s products,&quot; said Marissa Webb, creative director and evp of design at Banana Republic.</p>
<p>
The targeting of ads on Instagram is still rather basic, but it gives marketers the ability to reach people by age, gender and country.</p>
<p>
Meanwhile, CW, also an Omnicom partner, is promoting its program The Flash, with a quick clip of passengers in a plane on the runway who see a burst of light out the window and then the hero of the show running by.</p>
<p>
&quot;We created it from scratch and were sort of wondering where to put it when the Instagram opportunity popped up, and it was like kismet,&quot; said Caty Burgess, head of digital marketing at CW. &quot;We wanted to take full advantage of the Instagram opportunity and do something [memorable].&quot;</p>
<p>
Check out some of the Instagram ads debuting today below.&nbsp;</p>
<!-- Start of Brightcove Player --><div style="display:none">
Adweek responsive video player used on /video.</div>
<!--
By use of this code snippet, I agree to the Brightcove Publisher T and C
found at https://accounts.brightcove.com/en/terms-and-conditions/.
--><script language="JavaScript" type="text/javascript" src="http://admin.brightcove.com/js/BrightcoveExperiences.js"></script><p>
<object class="BrightcoveExperience" id="myExperience3866003512001"> <param name="bgcolor" value="#FFFFFF" /> <param name="width" value="652" /> <param name="height" value="367" /> <param name="playerID" value="3222576336001" /> <param name="playerKey" value="AQ~~,AAAAAEMe8RQ~,R8iUD_53FI8oumU8OTVt2hdMyPM6630E" /> <param name="isVid" value="true" /> <param name="isUI" value="true" /> <param name="dynamicStreaming" value="true" /> <param name="@videoPlayer" value="3866003512001" /> </object> <!--
This script tag will cause the Brightcove Players defined above it to be created as soon
as the line is read by the browser. If you wish to have the player instantiated only after
the rest of the HTML is processed and the page load is complete, remove the line.
--><script type="text/javascript">brightcove.createExperiences();</script><!-- End of Brightcove Player —>
<!-- Start of Brightcove Player --></p>
<div style="display:none">
Adweek responsive video player used on /video.</div>
<!--
By use of this code snippet, I agree to the Brightcove Publisher T and C
found at https://accounts.brightcove.com/en/terms-and-conditions/.
--><script language="JavaScript" type="text/javascript" src="http://admin.brightcove.com/js/BrightcoveExperiences.js"></script><p>
<object class="BrightcoveExperience" id="myExperience3866056703001"> <param name="bgcolor" value="#FFFFFF" /> <param name="width" value="652" /> <param name="height" value="367" /> <param name="playerID" value="3222576336001" /> <param name="playerKey" value="AQ~~,AAAAAEMe8RQ~,R8iUD_53FI8oumU8OTVt2hdMyPM6630E" /> <param name="isVid" value="true" /> <param name="isUI" value="true" /> <param name="dynamicStreaming" value="true" /> <param name="@videoPlayer" value="3866056703001" /> </object> <!--
This script tag will cause the Brightcove Players defined above it to be created as soon
as the line is read by the browser. If you wish to have the player instantiated only after
the rest of the HTML is processed and the page load is complete, remove the line.
--><script type="text/javascript">brightcove.createExperiences();</script><!-- End of Brightcove Player —>
<!-- Start of Brightcove Player --></p>
<div style="display:none">
Adweek responsive video player used on /video.</div>
<!--
By use of this code snippet, I agree to the Brightcove Publisher T and C
found at https://accounts.brightcove.com/en/terms-and-conditions/.
--><script language="JavaScript" type="text/javascript" src="http://admin.brightcove.com/js/BrightcoveExperiences.js"></script><p>
<object class="BrightcoveExperience" id="myExperience3866003511001"> <param name="bgcolor" value="#FFFFFF" /> <param name="width" value="652" /> <param name="height" value="367" /> <param name="playerID" value="3222576336001" /> <param name="playerKey" value="AQ~~,AAAAAEMe8RQ~,R8iUD_53FI8oumU8OTVt2hdMyPM6630E" /> <param name="isVid" value="true" /> <param name="isUI" value="true" /> <param name="dynamicStreaming" value="true" /> <param name="@videoPlayer" value="3866003511001" /> </object> <!--
This script tag will cause the Brightcove Players defined above it to be created as soon
as the line is read by the browser. If you wish to have the player instantiated only after
the rest of the HTML is processed and the page load is complete, remove the line.
--><script type="text/javascript">brightcove.createExperiences();</script><!-- End of Brightcove Player —>
<!-- Start of Brightcove Player --></p>
<div style="display:none">
Adweek responsive video player used on /video.</div>
<!--
By use of this code snippet, I agree to the Brightcove Publisher T and C
found at https://accounts.brightcove.com/en/terms-and-conditions/.
--><script language="JavaScript" type="text/javascript" src="http://admin.brightcove.com/js/BrightcoveExperiences.js"></script><p>
<object class="BrightcoveExperience" id="myExperience3865930330001"> <param name="bgcolor" value="#FFFFFF" /> <param name="width" value="652" /> <param name="height" value="367" /> <param name="playerID" value="3222576336001" /> <param name="playerKey" value="AQ~~,AAAAAEMe8RQ~,R8iUD_53FI8oumU8OTVt2hdMyPM6630E" /> <param name="isVid" value="true" /> <param name="isUI" value="true" /> <param name="dynamicStreaming" value="true" /> <param name="@videoPlayer" value="3865930330001" /> </object> <!--
This script tag will cause the Brightcove Players defined above it to be created as soon
as the line is read by the browser. If you wish to have the player instantiated only after
the rest of the HTML is processed and the page load is complete, remove the line.
--><script type="text/javascript">brightcove.createExperiences();</script><!-- End of Brightcove Player --></p>
TechnologyActivisionauto-play videoBanana Republicdigital videoDigitasLBiGarett SloaneFacebookGamingInstagraminstagram adsinstagram advertisingInstagram videoInstagram videosL'OréalLancômeMobilemobile videomobile video adsnew ad productnew adsOmnicomOmnicom Media GroupSnapchatSocialThe CWThe FlashTumblrThu, 30 Oct 2014 07:00:02 +0000161081 at http://www.adweek.comInside the Massive Campaign Behind Call of Duty: Advanced Warfarehttp://www.adweek.com/news/advertising-branding/inside-massive-campaign-behind-call-duty-advanced-warfare-160993
Sam Thielman<img src="http://www.adweek.com/files/imagecache/node-detail/news_article/kevin-spacy-cod-hed-2014.jpg"> <p>
Disembodied, badly equalized and with no musical cues or ambient sound around it, the nonetheless recognizable voice of Kevin Spacey in sneering antihero mode fuzzes over the computer speakers. &quot;You think that you can just march into these countries based on some fundamentalist religious principles, drop a few bombs, topple a dictator and start a democracy?&quot; he asks. &quot;Ha! Gimme a break.&quot; A strange humming noise follows.</p>
<p>
That audio clip, with no context, surfaced in May. A new episode of House of Cards, perhaps? An Aaron Sorkin project? It took the Internet a few hours to figure it out. When you ran the clip through a spectrogram(!), the waveform made by the hum at the end resolved into a picture of a soldier carrying a gun into battle in a pose instantly familiar to players of Activision&#39;s decade-plus-old video game franchise, <a href="http://www.adweek.com/news/advertising-branding/ad-day-yes-thats-kevin-spacey-new-call-duty-commercial-157430" target="_blank">Call of Duty.</a> Which is to say, everybody.</p>
<p>
The wildly popular game has earned Activision some $10 billion over its lifetime, which began in 2003, making it one of the most lucrative gaming franchises in history--with corporate siblings World of Warcraft and Skylanders among the others. For its 2011 iteration, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3, the company says it hosted 1.5 million concurrent players on the first day of release.</p>
<p>
The larger operating unit of Activision Blizzard, Activision is run by former Deutsch LA co-CEO Eric Hirshberg, who assumed the CEO job in 2010 and hasn&#39;t looked back. &quot;It&#39;s been a huge learning experience and very satisfying to be working on a creative product further upstream,&quot; Hirshberg says. &quot;In advertising, all you get to do is influence the message and the way a product is positioned and communicated. But as we know from the ad business, a lot of times there isn&#39;t something special or differentiating baked into the product itself. And this is a chance for me to influence that and make sure that the things that we were actually launching were created different before communication ever began.&quot;</p>
<p>
<img src="/files/kevin-spacy-cod-01-2014.jpg" style="margin-top: 15px; margin-bottom: 15px;" /></p>
<p>
<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="367" src="//www.youtube.com/embed/YSp8ZqIKEIM" width="652"></iframe></p>
<p>
In marketing terms, it&#39;s tempting to think of Call of Duty as basically a film franchise, but that&#39;s wrong. It is true that, much like a movie studio, Activision manages the campaigns leading up to the latest release of the game each November (this year, Nov. 4) with teasers starting six months out, the rollout of a big launch trailer, and integrations across everything from <a href="http://www.adweek.com/news/advertising-branding/call-duty-ghosts-campaign-will-dovetail-eminems-mmlp2-152286" target="_blank">last year&#39;s Eminem album</a> to this year&#39;s partnership with Vice Media (a documentary sponsored by Activision about the leaders of the mercenary industry upon whom Spacey&#39;s character is modeled). But it is a year-round enterprise, with new maps, add-ons and fun stuff made available for purchase every few weeks between game launches. For each marketing blowout--whose centerpiece is a flashy trailer from 72andSunny--there are four smaller, targeted campaigns.</p>
<p>
It&#39;s a good year to talk about strategy with Hirshberg and Tim Ellis, the company&#39;s CMO, because Activision is pulling out all the stops on Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare. The latest game has a new lead developer for the first time since 2005 (Sledgehammer Games, joining the alternating teams of Treyarch and Infinity Ward after working with the latter on CoD: Modern Warfare 3), and is going in a slightly more science-fictional direction. The series&#39; hallmark has always been realism down to the last detail (Activision likes to play up the Pentagon&#39;s input into the games), but the new guns and tanks look more like they&#39;re on loan from the R&amp;D division than the armory. In all honesty, the ripped-from-the-headlines thing doesn&#39;t always pay off. CoD: Black Ops 2 created a certain amount of controversy when Activision brought on Iran-Contra planner Oliver North as a consultant, and Manuel Noriega was less than thrilled with his cameo in Ghosts and is now suing the company. (Activision&#39;s official line, from none other than Rudy Giuliani, who represented the firm: &quot;Manuel Noriega had no more than an inconsequential appearance in Call of Duty and isn&#39;t entitled to anything for his role as a brutal dictator.&quot;)</p>
<div class="news-article-image" style="float: left;margin: 15px 0px 15px 0px;">
<img src="/files/imagecache/node-detail/kevin-spacy-cod-02-2014.jpg" />
<p class="caption">
Activision CEO Eric Hirshberg (l.) and CMO Tim Ellis | <span class="meta-credit"> Photo: Karl J. Kaul/Wonderful Machine</span></p>
</div>
<p>
<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="367" src="//www.youtube.com/embed/K2uN1gwxM8o" width="652"></iframe></p>
<p>
This time around, the most notable addition to the game is Spacey--a guy arguably more famous than either North or Noriega, and for much less scandalous reasons. Call of Duty&#39;s ads have a history of using Hollywood stars--Jonah Hill and Sam Worthington starred in a spot, directed by Peter Berg, for CoD: Modern Warfare 3. The developers also employ tinseltown production talent: screenwriters Stephen Gaghan (Syriana, Traffic) and David S. Goyer (The Dark Knight) have penned storylines for campaigns. Just last week, Los Angeles creative agency <a href="http://www.theantfarm.net/awards/2013" target="_blank">Ant Farm won a Grand Key Art Award </a>in the audio/visual category from The Hollywood Reporter and the Clio Awards for its work on the Call of Duty campaign.</p>
<p>
<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="367" src="//www.youtube.com/embed/zuzaxlddWbk" width="652"></iframe></p>
<p>
For Advanced Warfare, Hirshberg says, Activision wanted a face everyone would recognize. Spacey was at the top of the wish list. &quot;He&#39;s a guy who&#39;s done some really enterprising things in terms of getting involved with different media,&quot; Hirshberg notes. &quot;Doing a high-quality HBO-style show for Netflix is now a no-brainer; when he did it, it was a huge zag and unheard of.&quot;</p>
<p>
The relationship is beneficial to both Activision and Spacey, according to Hirshberg. &quot;We put him in front of a new audience who might not be familiar with some of his iconic films in another situation where he&#39;s trailblazing, being an actor on his level, a two-time Oscar winner in a completely new medium,&quot; he says.</p>
<div class="news-article-image" style="float: left;">
<img src="/files/imagecache/node-detail/taylor-kitsch-cod-01-2014.jpg" />
<p class="caption">
Taylor Kitsch, best known for Friday Night Lights, stars in a trailer promoting the latest CoD. &ldquo;I&rsquo;m very proud of the way I can handle a gun now,&rdquo; he says.<span class="meta-credit"> </span></p>
</div>
<p>
<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="367" src="//www.youtube.com/embed/MNxh7umVOZ0" width="652"></iframe></p>
<p>
Part of the reason the series is changing is because, frankly, it needs to. Last year&#39;s installment, CoD: Ghosts, was not as well-received as other launches. And with next-generation gaming systems (Xbox One, Sony PlayStation 4) comes the next generation of play mechanics, and a much more open playing field. World of Warcraft is a major source of revenue for Activision Blizzard, but that income has declined along with its subscriber base. Activision is hedging its bets--a little. It commissioned a well-received <a href="http://www.adweek.com/news/technology/activisions-500-million-destiny-launch-shows-power-online-video-160046" target="_blank">multiplayer shooter game, Destiny,</a> from Bungie, the studio that developed Microsoft&#39;s popular Halo franchise. But considering that the blockbuster game market caters primarily to people who buy two, maybe three games in a year, might Destiny eat into CoD&#39;s margins? Hirshberg insists that it won&#39;t. And as Cowen Group analyst Doug Creutz puts it: &quot;If you&#39;re going to get eaten, you&#39;d rather cannibalize yourself.&quot;</p>
<p>
Creutz personally looks forward to playing the latest CoD. &quot;It&#39;s futuristic and there&#39;s a greater emphasis on mobility in the player versus player, and Call of Duty lives and dies on the player versus player,&quot; he says. But the quality of the new title, he adds, might not matter. &quot;It&#39;s hard to get people to come back even if you do a better job this time around. If my friends have moved on to something else, I&#39;m going to play that,&quot; he says. The splashy Hollywood production values are there to attract new gamers, and that&#39;s always the balancing act for a game the size of Call of Duty: how to maintain both a massive fan base and manage churn by keeping the product appealing to a general audience.</p>
<p>
Call of Duty is in a league by itself. Grand Theft Auto, BioShock Infinite, XCOM--all are great games, but their audiences remain limited because, even when they do incredible sales, they don&#39;t come out every year. Titles that do come out every year, like FIFA, don&#39;t change much. &quot;Call of Duty is a little different because it&#39;s such a mass market product,&quot; Creutz says. &quot;The rest of the industry is so niche-y, and it takes so long to launch.&quot;</p>
<p>
As Ellis puts it, &quot;We have to treat every launch as our comeback, and we can&#39;t just go in there trying to top ourselves. We have to go into it with the mind-set that we need a radical leap forward every year of the franchise launch.&quot;</p>
<p>
<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="367" src="//www.youtube.com/embed/OZwdpXgPbKc" width="652"></iframe></p>
<p>
Creutz estimates that Call of Duty costs $50 million to $100 million to launch and market each year. (Activision declined to comment.) It would be very hard to spend too much, he says. &quot;They&#39;re doing over $1 billion a year on this game, so whether they spend $50 million or $100 million to make it, it&#39;s a rounding error. You spend what you need to spend to make it great,&quot; Creutz says.</p>
<p>
Accordingly, for the game&#39;s big celebrity-driven trailer this time around, <a href="http://www.adweek.com/news/television/taylor-kitsch-true-detective-call-duty-and-living-out-his-car-la-160952" target="_blank">the company tapped Taylor Kitsch,</a> best known for playing Tim Riggins on NBC&#39;s Friday Night Lights and star, with Colin Farrell and Vince Vaughn, of the coming season of HBO&#39;s True Detective. Kitsch was an obvious choice, not just because of his fan base but also his relationship with Berg, who created Friday Night Lights. And he recently worked on Lone Survivor, another project with a heavy military presence on set. &quot;Having worked with Navy SEALs, I&#39;m very proud of the way I can handle a gun now,&quot; says Kitsch. With respect to Call of Duty, he says, &quot;I just hope to keep throwing curveballs.&quot; And there are more balls in the air than ever before. &quot;The game has changed,&quot; says Kitsch. &quot;And I haven&#39;t been in it forever, but it&#39;s definitely different, especially given how much that foreign box office means. Sometimes it&#39;s a good 75-25, if not 80-20.&quot;</p>
<p>
Overseas concerns don&#39;t just affect the movie business. Activision relies on the international market, too. China, in particular, is vast and slippery territory for the gaming companies, with borderline nonexistent enforcement of piracy laws and supply chain problems companies that operate solely in the American market never have to deal with--even taking into account the digital nature of the product.</p>
<p>
That&#39;s why Hirshberg has a well-regarded internal division, Raven, working on solutions. &quot;We&#39;re making a specific game from the ground up for the Chinese market,&quot; he says. &quot;The business model is a little bit different. You make the content that&#39;s right for the Chinese market--it&#39;s primarily free to play and microtransaction based, but we&#39;re doing it with our triple-A, Western studios.&quot;</p>
<p>
The Chinese CoD, in other words, will probably be a freely downloadable game through Chinese media giant Tencent in which a user pays a few renminbi for perks--bigger guns, better bombs, emergency backup. It probably will be smaller in terms of file size than the multi-gigabyte edition that comes on Blu-ray discs for PS4 and Xbox One. In many ways, it is the industry&#39;s next challenge. To make it in the key Chinese market, Activision has to produce a high-quality game that can be downloaded and played over spotty connections via old cables and overloaded networks run by local monopolies.</p>
<p>
Then there&#39;s the obligation to respond to any hiccups quickly and well. One of the ways CoD has remained popular in the U.S. is through customer relationship management. Ellis, who worked for Volkswagen and Volvo prior to Activision, understands the importance of customer relations. &quot;We&#39;re constantly asking ourselves how best to keep players happy and engaged and just keep them coming back and wanting more,&quot; he says. &quot;And then, of course, how do you encourage them to express themselves through creation of user-generated content and other sorts of ambassador activities?&quot;</p>
<p>
The answer can be found in virtually every meeting space at Activision. Throughout the building, Ellis says, one can find these wise words scrawled across whiteboards: &quot;No Douche Moves.&quot;</p>
Advertising & BrandingTechnology72andsunnyActivisionActivision BlizzardCall of DutySam ThielmanDeutsch LAGamingKevin SpaceyMagazine ContentOnlinePeter BergPS4SkylandersTaylor KitschTrue DetectiveVideoWorld of WarcraftXboxMon, 27 Oct 2014 04:02:06 +0000160993 at http://www.adweek.comWhy Led Zeppelin, Billy Joel and Dylan Now Readily Sell Their Songs to Brands http://www.adweek.com/news/advertising-branding/why-led-zeppelin-billy-joel-and-dylan-now-readily-sell-their-songs-brands-160272
Andrew McMains<img src="http://www.adweek.com/files/imagecache/node-detail/news_article/led-zeppelin-hed-2014.jpg"> <p>
When Led Zeppelin licensed &ldquo;Rock and Roll&rdquo; to Cadillac for its <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gpD7f8gWgDg" target="_blank">&ldquo;</a><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gpD7f8gWgDg" target="_blank">Break Through</a><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gpD7f8gWgDg" target="_blank">&rdquo;</a> spot in 2002, it was a huge coup for the carmaker, as the band had never let a marketer use one of its songs before. Fast-forward to 2014 and the group has licensed two songs&mdash;to Activision and Dior Homme&mdash;in just 12 months.</p>
<p>
Similarly, other classic rockers with boomer appeal, including Billy Joel and Bob Dylan, are now liberally licensing songs to marketers after decades of holding out, and there&rsquo;s even talk of Prince following suit. And while such longtime holdouts remain picky about the brands they deal with, clearly any philosophical barrier around &ldquo;selling out&rdquo; has been shattered.</p>
<p>
The simple reason is that there&rsquo;s big money to be made as traditional sources of revenue have dried up. In short, music sales are down, MTV has<a href="/node/153343"> abandoned videos</a> and radio is dominated by a handful of mega-pop stars. So, particularly for nontouring bands like Zeppelin, advertising has become a welcome cash cow. &ldquo;Advertising has become the new MTV in a lot of ways for artists, bands to get their music out there and actually get paid for it,&rdquo; explained Paul Greco, JWT&rsquo;s director of music and radio.</p>
<div class="news-article-image" style="float: left;margin: 15px 0px 15px 0px;">
<img class="fancyzoom" data-fancybox-src="/files/imagecache/w1200/tt-rock-music-01-2014.jpg" src="/files/imagecache/node-blog/tt-rock-music-01-2014.jpg" /></div>
<p>
Depending on the popularity of a song and how long it&rsquo;s used, the payday ranges from tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars to more than $1 million for the most coveted songs from the biggest names, including The Beatles (whose &ldquo;Revolution&rdquo; cost Nike $500,000 way back in 1987), per agency music directors.</p>
<p>
For big acts like Zeppelin, &ldquo;it has got to be a big money deal. Otherwise they don&rsquo;t do it,&rdquo; said Josh Rabinowitz, director of music at Grey.</p>
<p>
<a href="/node/145855">Beyond cash grabbing</a><a href="http:///node/145855" target="_blank">,</a> licensing deals introduce old music to younger generations, thereby expanding a band&rsquo;s audience for music and ticket sales. &ldquo;Obviously, they&rsquo;re making money, but it&rsquo;s also putting [songs] back out there for a new audience,&rdquo; said Melissa Chester, an executive music producer at BBDO. &ldquo;It&rsquo;s next-gen, and they don&rsquo;t want to be out of it.&rdquo;</p>
<p>
Finally, there&rsquo;s transactional appeal, as ad placements can cross-promote the launch of a tour or rerelease of classic albums, as Zeppelin is doing now. The graphic above takes a closer look at three recent deals.</p>
Advertising & BrandingActivisionBeyonceBilly JoelBob DylanCadillacAndrew McMainsDior HommeLed ZeppelinMagazine ContentMusicNikeThe BeatlesMon, 22 Sep 2014 14:13:37 +0000160272 at http://www.adweek.comActivision's $500 Million 'Destiny' Launch Shows Power of Online Videohttp://www.adweek.com/news/technology/activisions-500-million-destiny-launch-shows-power-online-video-160046
Erik Oster<img src="http://www.adweek.com/files/imagecache/node-detail/news_article/video_game.png"> <p>
With gaming giants Activision (Call of Duty franchise) and Bungie (Halo franchise) behind it, <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Destiny_%28video_game%29" target="_blank">yesterday&#39;s release</a> of Destiny was bound to be a big pre-order event. But the game exceeded expectations, with more than $500 million already tallied for orders by stores, to easily become one of the largest wholesale launches of a new game franchise in history.</p>
<p>
Indeed, Activision&#39;s <a href="http://www.mediapost.com/publications/article/233679/you-gotta-spend-it-to-make-it-activision-earmarks.html?edition=75890" target="_blank">$500 million investment</a> in marketing the game seems to already have payed off. A gameplay trailer was released in late August and has racked up almost 6.5 million views on YouTube. The live-action trailer for the game, released last week, has already eclipsed that figure, with almost eight million views already.</p>
<p>
For the second trailer, Activision collaborated with agency 72andSunny, production company Reset Content, Academy Award winning VFX studio Digital Domain and Academy Award nominated FX studio Legacy Effect. The two-minute trailer, directed by Joseph Kosinski (Oblivion, TRON: Legacy), features voice acting from Peter Dinklage (who also appears in the game), as well as licensing Led Zeppelin&#39;s &quot;Immigrant Song,&quot; and seems more like a preview for a Hollywood blockbuster than a video game.&nbsp;</p>
<p>
Given the game&#39;s initial success, analysts are already predicting the title will be the year&#39;s top-selling game, moving 12 million to 20 million copies for over $1 billion in revenue, according to <a href="http://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/gaming/2014/09/08/activision-blizzard-bungie-destiny/15284661/" target="_blank">USA Today</a>.</p>
<p>
&quot;Since the beginning, we&rsquo;ve been confident that our investment and belief in Destiny would pay off,&quot; said Eric Hirshberg, CEO of Activision Publishing, in a statement. &quot;But not many people believed we&rsquo;d be able to say it did so on day one.&quot;</p>
<p>
For comparison, earlier this year, Ubisoft announced that its Watch Dogs release was the &quot;best-selling new [game] at launch across the video game industry&quot; after wholesaling roughly four million copies in its first week. The retail equivalent of that number of units would equal no more than $250 million&mdash;much less the $500 million wholesale figure claimed by Activision.</p>
<p>
Check out the Santa Monica, Calif.-based brand&#39;s trailer below.</p>
<p>
<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="367" src="//www.youtube.com/embed/9ZyQK6kUdWQ" width="652"></iframe></p>
TechnologyActivisionBungieDestinyGamingGamingWed, 10 Sep 2014 20:14:49 +0000160046 at http://www.adweek.comAd of the Day: Led Zeppelin's 'Immigrant Song' Drives Epic Live-Action Trailer for Destinyhttp://www.adweek.com/news/advertising-branding/ad-day-led-zeppelins-immigrant-song-drives-epic-live-action-trailer-destiny-159931
Tim Nudd<img src="http://www.adweek.com/files/imagecache/node-detail/news_article/destiny-hed-2014.jpg"> <p>
Ad agency 72andSunny assembled quite the crew for its latest live-action trailer for an Activision video game&mdash;in this case Destiny, a new post-apocalyptic shooter game coming out Tuesday that&#39;s set 700 years in the future and features humans struggling to stay alive in a solar system they&#39;ve colonized.</p>
<p>
Joseph Kosinski (Oblivion and Tron:Legacy) directed it, with help from Oscar-winning DP Claudio Miranda (Life of Pi), Oscar-winning effects studio Digital Domain, Oscar-nominated effects studio Legacy Effects and Oscar-winning sound designer Per Hallberg (Skyfall, the Bourne movies).</p>
<p>
The results are impressive. It has that now-familiar mix of epic visuals and sly comedy. But once again&mdash;as is true in so many cinematic video-game trailers&mdash;it&#39;s the music that really makes it. And you can&#39;t get a much more epic track than Led Zeppelin&#39;s &quot;Immigrant Song.&quot;</p>
<p>
<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="367" src="//www.youtube.com/embed/9ZyQK6kUdWQ?rel=0" width="652"></iframe></p>
<p>
Kosinski, of course, knows this, having directed the famous <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ccWrbGEFgI8" target="_blank">&quot;Mad World&quot; spot for Gears of War</a> way back when. Kosinski also likes to shoot as much as possible in camera&mdash;and did so here by traveling to remote locations in Mexico, Arizona and Utah to film the scenes on the moon, Venus and Mars.</p>
<p>
Oh, and the levitating AI character of the Ghost is voiced by Peter Dinklage (Game of Thrones), who plays the same character in the game.</p>
<p>
&quot;The live-action trailer is the culmination of an ambitious marketing campaign befitting what we hope is our next blockbuster franchise,&quot; says Activision CMO Tim Ellis. &quot;The campaign has included a previous live-action commercial by Jon Favreau, a Beta played by 4.6 million people, the first selfie sent into deep space, the first Newsweek special edition for a commercial product, gameplay trailers exploring Mars, Venus and the Moon, and Destiny Planet View, a chance to walk through these worlds using Google Street View&mdash;the first time a video game has been mapped using Google technologies.&quot;</p>
<p>
Check out the <a href="https://www.destinyplanetview.com" target="_blank">Destiny Planet View site here,</a> and the trailer for it below.</p>
<p>
<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="367" src="//www.youtube.com/embed/oMpGYh9FZM8?rel=0" width="652"></iframe></p>
<p>
<strong>CREDITS</strong><br />
Client: Activision Publishing<br />
Chief Executive Officer: Eric Hirshberg<br />
Chief Marketing Officer: Tim Ellis<br />
Senior Vice President, Consumer Marketing: Todd Harvey<br />
Vice President, Consumer Marketing: Ryan Crosby<br />
Senior Manager, Consumer Marketing: Alonso Velasco<br />
Associate Manager, Consumer Marketing: Pam Caironi</p>
<p>
Agency: 72andSunny<br />
Chief Executive Officer: John Boiler<br />
Chief Creative Officer: Glenn Cole<br />
Chief Strategy Officer: Matt Jarvis<br />
Chief Production Officer: Tom Dunlap<br />
Head of Production: Sam Baerwald<br />
Executive Creative Director: Frank Hahn<br />
Creative Director, Writer: Tim Wolfe<br />
Creative Director, Designer: Peter Vattanatham<br />
Lead Designer: Garrett Jones<br />
Copywriter: Ryan Iverson<br />
Art Director: Vincent Barretto<br />
Executive Producer: Dan Ruth<br />
Senior Producer: Eric Rasco<br />
Production Coordinator: Michael Quinones<br />
Group Brand Director: Mike Parseghian<br />
Brand Director: Eli Hoy<br />
Brand Manager: Morgan Murray<br />
Brand Coordinator: Kirbee Fruehe<br />
Business Affairs Director: Amy Jacobsen<br />
Business Affairs Manager: Kelly Ventrelli<br />
Business Affairs Coordinator: Amy Shah</p>
<p>
Production Company: Reset Content<br />
Director: Joseph Kosinski<br />
Director of Photography: Claudio Miranda<br />
Managing Director: Dave Morrison<br />
Executive Producer: Jeff McDougall<br />
Producer: Julien Lemaitre</p>
<p>
Costumes: Legacy Effects<br />
Effects Supervisor: J. Alan Scott<br />
Key Artists: Vance Hartwell, Anna O&#39; Kane, Marilyn Chaney, Greg Smith, Won Song</p>
<p>
Editing Company: Union Editorial/Circus<br />
Editor: Jono Griffith<br />
Assistant Editor: Jedidiah Stuber<br />
Executive Producer, President: Michael Raimondi<br />
Senior Producer: Joe Ross</p>
<p>
Visual Effect: Digital Domain<br />
Chief Creative Officer, Senior Visual Effects Supervisor: Eric Barba<br />
Senior Producer: Carla Attanasio<br />
Producer: Charles Bolwell<br />
Senior Visual Effects Coordinator: Alex Michael<br />
Computer Graphics Supervisor: Greg Teegarden<br />
Compositing Supervisor: Dan Akers<br />
Animation Director: Steve Preeg<br />
Effects Lead: Eddie Smith<br />
Computer Graphics Lead: Daisuke Nagae<br />
On-Set, Data Integration: Viki Chan<br />
Art Director/AFX: Cody Williams<br />
President, Advertising and Games: Rich Flier<br />
Executive Producer, Head of Production: Scott Gemmell</p>
<p>
Sound Design: Formosa Group<br />
Supervising Sound Editor: Per Hallberg<br />
1st Assistant Sound Editor: Philip D. Morrill<br />
Sound Designers: Ann Scibelli, Jon Title</p>
<p>
Mix: Lime<br />
Mixer: Rohan Young<br />
Assistant: Jeff Malen</p>
Advertising & Branding72andsunnyActivisionAd of The DayDestinyCreativeTim NuddFri, 05 Sep 2014 20:22:48 +0000159931 at http://www.adweek.comDigitasLBi and SimpleReach Team for Comparative Metricshttp://www.adweek.com/news/technology/digitaslbi-simplereach-create-online-measurement-tool-157409
Michelle Castillo<img src="http://www.adweek.com/files/imagecache/node-detail/news_article/digituslbi-hed-2013_0.jpg"> <p>
<a href="http://www.digitaslbi.com/global/" target="_blank">DigitasLBi</a> and <a href="http://www.simplereach.com/" target="_blank">SimpleReach</a> are creating the NewFronts Brand Content Index, which is designed to help brands figure out if their ads are making an impact in the digital space. The companies made the announcement on Thursday afternoon at the DigitasLBi <a href="http://www.adweek.com/newfronts" target="_blank">NewFront</a>s in New York</p>
<p>
&quot;In a world where everyone wants to be cutting edge, no one is willing to be first. They want to be trailblazers, but they want to see how everyone else is doing,&quot; Anne-Marie Kline, DigitasLBi svp of social content, told Adweek at the event.&nbsp;</p>
<p>
The companies touted that the system will show brands how their pageviews, shares, traffic from social, time spent, unique viewers (reach) and other categories compare across the online sphere. It will hopefully give marketers a way to see if their campaigns are actually working, a common grumbling across the space.</p>
<p>
Kline pointed out that marketers&#39; competitors online aren&#39;t just brands in their specific category&mdash;but everyone else on the Web. For example, shoe retailers compete against House of Cards on Netflix, Pharell&#39;s &quot;Happy&quot; song and the latest Call of Duty from Activision, she said. While the system will allow brands to narrow down their results to specific guidelines, it won&#39;t limit them to specific cateogories.&nbsp;</p>
<p>
&quot;The system is going to show you how your brand content is doing across other content in the Web,&quot; she explained.</p>
<p>
The program will be available exclusively to DigitasLBi clients through 2014, after which it will be open to all brands. A handful of companies have already signed up, but no one was confirmed to talk about their deals.&nbsp;</p>
<p>
The Manhattan-based digital agency, which conceived the idea of the NewFronts, has been dominant at this year&#39;s event. Prior to its presentation, it announced it would sponsor <a href="http://www.adweek.com/news/technology/aol-doubles-down-web-shows-james-franco-steve-buscemi-157364" target="_blank">AOL&#39;s Zoe Saldana executive-produced series My Hero</a> and that it would be the first agency partner for <a href="http://www.adweek.com/news/technology/youtube-will-let-brands-target-top-5-its-videos-157396" target="_blank">Google Preferred</a>.&nbsp;</p>
TechnologyMarketingActivisionAolDCNF 2014-15DigitasMichelle CastilloGoogle PreferredNetflixNewFronts 2014SimpleReachYoutubeZoe SaldanaThu, 01 May 2014 19:22:36 +0000157409 at http://www.adweek.comWill Video Game-Toy Hybrids Save the Industry or Eat It?http://www.adweek.com/news/advertising-branding/will-video-game-toy-hybrids-save-industry-or-eat-it-155724
Sam Thielman<p>
Until recently, your kid&rsquo;s brain has been the best place to stage battles between Spider-Man and Skeletor. But technology has made this a brave new world, and digital architects have built a whole new arena. Gaming has come to toy town.&nbsp;</p>
<div class="news-article-image" style="float: right;margin: 10px 0px 10px 10px;">
<img class="fancyzoom" data-fancybox-src="/files/imagecache/top-banner/fea-toyfair-01-2014.jpg" src="/files/imagecache/test-width/fea-toyfair-01-2014.jpg" />
<p class="caption">
<span class="meta-credit">Photo: Vasava</span></p>
</div>
<p>
Good timing, too. The domestic toy industry flattened in 2012 and actively declined 1 percent in 2013 to $16.3 billion, according to market analysis firm the NPD Group. But one of the few categories growing&mdash;by a whopping 70 percent year over year, if you believe Activision&mdash;was the interactive toy market. These toys work directly with video games by way of a little plastic platform hooked into a game console that reads a chip in each toy&rsquo;s base. Put Wash Buckler or Smolderdash on the <a href="http://www.skylanders.com/video-games/skylanders-swap-force" target="_blank">Skylanders: Swap Force </a>&ldquo;portal&rdquo; and suddenly your new toy shows up on-screen, able to summon a translucent blue pirate ship or set bad guys on fire. Buy the &ldquo;playset&rdquo; with the princesses from Frozen for Disney&rsquo;s Infinity game, and you get a clear plate about the size of a poker chip that unlocks minigames themed to the figures.</p>
<p>
This is an idea, by the way, that has been tried several times before, often disastrously . It didn&rsquo;t help the initial pitch that when Activision created the category with the first Skylanders game during the 2011 Christmas season, casual and family gaming was considered a waning trend. &ldquo;The premier children&rsquo;s console was the Nintendo Wii, which was on the decline, and most developers were running away from it at the time,&rdquo; recalls <a href="http://www.adweek.com/brand-genius" target="_blank">Tim Ellis</a>, CMO of Activision. &ldquo;We essentially got into the toy business, which is not the core competency of the company. And we just had a lot of data at the time telling us that it was not a particularly smart idea.&rdquo;</p>
<p>
But the possibility that Activision could create and then corner new markets in both toys and games was too good to pass up. This time, there were no technical flubs, no angry parents and none of the other roadblocks that had stymied past gaming-toy development. All told, Activision informed investors it generated more than $2 billion in sales from both toys and copies of the Skylanders games since launch.</p>
<p>
Disney has sold 3 million Infinity starter packs since the game went on sale in August, and for <a href="/node/155606">Disney Interactive</a>, that success is a huge shift. The unit operated at a loss of $76 million in Q4 of 2012 but reported a profit of $16 million for Q4 of 2013. That&rsquo;s not yet enough, frankly. The company spent $100 million to make the game over nearly four years, during which time Disney Interactive lost hundreds of millions of dollars&mdash;notably from social gaming unit <a href="http://www.playdom.com/" target="_blank">Playdom</a>, a company Disney bought for $563 million in 2010. (Playdom is reportedly slated for major layoffs.) Infinity represents an opportunity to turn the ship around. Revenue for 2013 more than doubled from the previous year to $396 million, according to the parent company&rsquo;s SEC filings.</p>
<p>
John Blackburn, the Disney Interactive vp who oversees Infinity (and founded Avalanche, the studio that developed the game), says the game solves a problem that had grown more and more difficult over the years for IP rights holders: how to make tie-in games on a movie-release timeline that don&rsquo;t bust budgets or play like junk. (Disney isn&rsquo;t alone in dealing with this problem. Said one critic of the final Harry Potter movie tie-in game, &ldquo;We can&rsquo;t score it low enough.&rdquo;)</p>
<p>
&ldquo;With Frozen, we didn&rsquo;t do a full game this time around,&rdquo; Blackburn says&mdash;they did an Infinity playset and will do more for future movies. The game was originally for the Toy Story 3 tie-in that the programmers didn&rsquo;t have time to implement fully. &ldquo;When we actually saw the first cuts of the film, we thought, if we could make a game that is just about playing with your toys, we should do that for Toy Story 3,&rdquo; he says. Instead, it was shelved, given a relaxed lead time, and code-named Project Toy Box.</p>
<p>
Interactive toys are also an acknowledgement that the overall model for the video game industry has changed&mdash;the single-purchase $60 game built from scratch is a less and less attractive proposition to publishers, as risky as making a big-budget movie that might not get its investment back. Downloadable content&mdash;extra levels, new play modes, different playable characters&mdash;with lower price points and lighter investment has been the norm for a while in the grown-up gaming world (think the $0.99-$14.99 bells and whistles that roll out every few weeks for Activision&rsquo;s other juggernaut, <a href="/node/152286">Call of Duty</a>).</p>
<p>
Skylanders and Infinity are an expression of that same ethos: spend less on development, publish more frequently, charge the consumer a smaller premium. Kids (and yes, some adults) get a physical doodad for $12, and it&rsquo;s kind of cool. And within the games themselves, there are also levels and sections blocked off that can only be accessed with a toy from the toy store. Though Infinity and Skylanders aren&rsquo;t terribly similar in terms of their play styles, both have one in-game feature in common. When you try to get into those sections with the wrong character, you&rsquo;re treated to a fairly shameless video previewing all the fun you&rsquo;re missing until you buy the toy that can open up that section.</p>
<!--pagebreak-->
<p>
What&rsquo;s alarming for the larger toy industry is that those doodads now represent a sizable chunk of the domestic market, which has seen gaming rocket into global popularity. Christmas was terrible for several toy makers. Q4 sales for Mattel were down $142.7 million against Q4 2012, and as of January the company remained locked in a bitter legal dispute over industrial espionage with rival MGA Entertainment (of the Bratz line of dolls&mdash;Marilyn to <a href="/node/155653">Barbie</a>&rsquo;s Jackie O). <a href="/node/154162">Hasbro</a> isn&rsquo;t in much better shape. In November, a court ruled it had shorted the inventor of the Super Soaker and Nerf guns by enough to award Johnson Research nearly $73 million. Sales of boys&rsquo; toys were down 16 percent in Q4. And now interactive toys are eating away at parts of the toy market.&nbsp;</p>
<div class="news-article-image" style="float: right;margin: 10px 0px 10px 10px;">
<img class="fancyzoom" data-fancybox-src="/files/imagecache/top-banner-columns/fea-toyfair-02-2014.jpg" src="/files/imagecache/test-width/fea-toyfair-02-2014.jpg" />
<p class="caption">
<span class="meta-credit">Photo: Vasava</span></p>
</div>
<p>
Specifically, they&rsquo;re taking a chunk out of the action figure sector. &ldquo;If you look at the action figure business itself, it&rsquo;s down big time,&rdquo; notes Bobby Stewart, CEO of Canadian toy company Swappz, which is looking for a piece of the low to middle sections of the connected toy market with Power Rangers and The Smurfs toys that work with branded mobile apps. &ldquo;The action figure business is not dead, it&rsquo;s just moved&mdash;there&rsquo;s a new way of doing it.&rdquo; (Not everyone agrees. Russ Crupnick, svp, industry analysis for NPD, argues that some of the decline is just cyclical.)</p>
<p>
Stewart&rsquo;s path to the toy industry is nontraditional, to say the least. Formerly a minor league hockey player, he got into the toy industry barely three years ago and rolled out Swappz last year with big-box retailers Walmart and Target already on board. &ldquo;One of the complications we&rsquo;ve obviously had [is] that we&rsquo;ve grown so fast,&rdquo; Stewart says. Meanwhile, the company is looking for more investors. &ldquo;It takes big money to do these things, and we&rsquo;re working on a very limited and tight budget,&rdquo; he admits. Stewart has managed to nab some recognizable IP for Swappz&mdash;WWE and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (internationally only, at this point), among others.</p>
<p>
Stewart is certain that gaining an immediate toehold in the ballooning interactive toy market is vital for anybody looking to stay in that business. &ldquo;It&rsquo;s a $2 billion market that Skylanders started, but I don&rsquo;t think it&rsquo;s an $8 billion market,&rdquo; he says. &ldquo;The more people come along, the more it&rsquo;s going to get sliced.&rdquo; And it&rsquo;s not just the newcomers that are going to try to siphon off some of that market growth. Hasbro&rsquo;s recent acquisition of a coveted license to make toys for Rovio&rsquo;s Angry Birds video game is now yielding fruit.</p>
<p>
Hasbro also holds the master license (the right to control virtually all of the toys stemming from a given property in exchange for a hefty advance and guarantees) for Star Wars&mdash;and <a href="/node/155717">Angry Birds</a>&rsquo; most successful editions have been Star Wars-themed. So now, using tiny QR codes on the bases of its figures, kids can &ldquo;teleport&rdquo; toys they buy at retail into the game every time they need a boost&mdash;a Han Solo bird for this stunt, a Princess Leia bird for that one.</p>
<p>
The upshot is that toy-based games are going to derive a lot of their value from the intellectual property being licensed or created&mdash;much more than a simple movie-to-game cash in. As the first into the pool, Activision went the difficult route and created its own IP, but given that Disney spent $4 billion on Star Wars and another $4 billion on Marvel in a scant five years, it&rsquo;s eager to realize as much return on that investment as it can. &ldquo;Marvel and Star Wars are coming to Infinity,&rdquo; says one licensing exec who asked not to be named. &ldquo;You can charge a lot more for a physical thing than you can for a single item or character.&rdquo; More companies than just Disney, he says, &ldquo;are trying to revitalize their aging IP with the latest and the hippest technology,&rdquo; and in this case it&rsquo;s working extremely well.</p>
<p>
It&rsquo;s also pushing these toys into a slightly older demographic, which is where they want to be. &ldquo;Kids are growing up sooner,&rdquo; says the exec. &ldquo;They&rsquo;re aging out of demographics much quicker than they used to. They&rsquo;re gravitating more toward video games as brands are being shifted ever younger.&rdquo; There&rsquo;s been a recent trend to market age-appropriate versions of valuable properties like Batman and the Transformers to kids as young as possible in an effort to maximize the length of time each child is buying those branded toys&mdash;and that trend has backfired. Much of this has to do with the way kids behave socially. Once a child is old enough to worry about whether it&rsquo;s cool to play with the same things as his little brother, he&rsquo;s moving on. It&rsquo;s one reason you won&rsquo;t see as many licensed goods targeting the very young this year at <a href="http://www2.toyassociation.org/AM/Template.cfm?Section=TF_Show_Information2" target="_blank">Toy Fair</a>. &ldquo;If you can get it on your pajamas, it&rsquo;s probably not something a 12-year-old wants,&rdquo; says Crupnick.</p>
<p>
Technology has inherent age minimums (although toddlers love tablets and smartphones), so it&rsquo;s going to be desirable to kids old enough to want to seem sophisticated. And more and more, games are simply seen as a better expression of the IP that&rsquo;s been the cornerstone of the toy industry. &ldquo;A Han Solo action figure can only have so many adventures before you discard it,&rdquo; the exec says sadly. &ldquo;Why would you want to buy a $10 action figure when you can buy an app that can keep you entertained for hours?&rdquo;</p>
Advertising & BrandingInteractiveMarketingActivisionchildrenDisneySam ThielmanHasbroMagazine ContentTim EllisToy FairToy Story 3ToysPackaged GoodsRetailCreativeMon, 17 Feb 2014 04:11:08 +0000155724 at http://www.adweek.comAgencies Should Gamify Their Cultures and Operationshttp://www.adweek.com/news/advertising-branding/agencies-should-gamify-their-cultures-and-operations-154073
Craig Atkinson<p>
Back when the massive explosion in gaming first appeared on everyone&rsquo;s radar in the mid-2000s, alarmed legislators, regulators and old fogies commissioned research to find out exactly what affect all this gaming was having on &ldquo;the youth of today.&rdquo;&nbsp;</p>
<div class="news-article-image" style="float: right;margin: 10px 0px 10px 10px;">
<img class="fancyzoom" data-fancybox-src="/files/imagecache/node-detail/voice-gamification-01-2013.jpg" src="/files/imagecache/test-width/voice-gamification-01-2013.jpg" />
<p class="caption">
Illustration: Jacob Thomas &nbsp;</p>
</div>
<p>
The results shocked even the most ardent gaming supporters.</p>
<p>
Nick Yee, whose <a href="http://www.nickyee.com/daedalus/" target="_blank">Daedalus Project</a> was the longest-running longitudinal study of gamers and gaming behavior, found that, in fact, those participating in massively multiplayer online games (MMOG) like World of Warcraft were actually working extremely hard to win in these online environments.</p>
<p>
Yee concluded, &ldquo;MMOGs are actually massively multiplayer work environments disguised as games.&rdquo; In other words, your parents were wrong&mdash;spending your weekends playing Grand Theft Auto didn&rsquo;t turn your brain into oatmeal. In fact, it likely developed many of the same core skill sets that are probably in your job description today: organizing teams, assigning tasks, monitoring processes, staffing organizational units and overseeing budgets.</p>
<p>
To understand the level of commitment on an individual game basis, consider the <a href="/node/152997">Call of Duty</a> franchise. According to the game&rsquo;s producer, Activision, the average player spends 170 hours a year&mdash;the equivalent to one month of full-time work&mdash;&ldquo;working&rdquo; on the game.</p>
<p>
Noted gaming expert Jane McGonigal believes all this brainpower can be channelled into something she calls the engagement economy. In her view, all that game play is core to what makes us human: &ldquo;to be challenged, to master new skills, to put those skills in service of something that really matters and to be connected to a larger community.&rdquo; Considering that a recent global Gallup survey found an astonishing 90 percent of employees are not engaged in their jobs&mdash;a disconnect that translates to $2 trillion in lost productivity&mdash;McGonigal&rsquo;s insights should be seen as a call to action: transform the work ethic into the play ethic.</p>
<p>
Most workplace jobs are actually games that are so badly designed that companies have to pay people to play them. In recognition of the massive disparity in engagement between game space and workplace, Pat Kane, author of The Play Ethic, predicted: &ldquo;Play will be for the 21st century what work was to the industrial age: the dominant way of knowing, doing and creating value.&rdquo; He also posits that play will be the ultimate (and necessary) olive branch to extend to millennials from older generational management.</p>
<p>
Moving forward, the key to enhanced efficiency and effectiveness for corporations, especially agencies, where engagement is the deliverable and millennials are the prime talent pool, lies in gamifying their cultures and operations. This could explain why the IT consultancy, Gartner, has forecast that, by 2015, 50 percent of organizations that manage innovation processes will be &ldquo;gamifying&rdquo; those processes. And by 2014, 70 percent of blue-chip companies will have at least one &ldquo;gamified&rdquo; application.</p>
<p>
In PHD&rsquo;s book Game Change, examining the impact of gamification on both brand engagement and enterprise effectiveness, my colleague and PHD worldwide director of planning and strategy Mark Holden offers a blueprint for building a gamified enterprise system at the agency level, using Source, PHD&rsquo;s MMOG platform, as the model:</p>
<p>
&ldquo;At the core,&rdquo; Holden writes, &ldquo;Source functions as a live collaboration engine which is enabled by our embedded suite of agency planning and execution tools. Players are awarded Pings for interacting with the system: optimizing channel mixes, cracking a thought leader or contributing specific channel ideas. We&rsquo;ve also incorporated leader boards and high scores which are displayed prominently in our office lobbies throughout the globe.&rdquo;</p>
<p>
The reaction of clients and staff alike has been remarkable, with Source being cited as a key factor in our two biggest wins of the past year, and employee satisfaction levels tracking at an all-time high.</p>
<p>
Just as the scratch plow was to the agrarian revolution, interchangeable parts to the industrial revolution and the Internet to the information age, so too will gaming be to the engagement economy.</p>
<p>
The choice is clear: play, or get played.</p>
<p>
<em>Craig Atkinson is chief digital officer, COO of PHD U.S., a unit of <a href="http://www.omnicommediagroup.com" target="_blank">Omnicom Media Group</a>.</em></p>
Advertising & BrandingActivisionCall of DutyDaedalus ProjectGamingMagazine ContentCraig AtkinsonPHD U.S.The VoiceTwitterTue, 26 Nov 2013 02:41:36 +0000154073 at http://www.adweek.comApp Lets Fans Play New Call of Duty Game With Their Sports Heroeshttp://www.adweek.com/news/technology/app-lets-fans-play-new-call-duty-game-their-sports-heroes-154097
Melissa Hoffmann<img src="http://www.adweek.com/files/imagecache/node-detail/news_article/cod_nfl.jpeg"> <p>
Most gamers would say nothing beats the multiplayer experience&mdash;especially for a first-person shooter saga like <a href="http://www.adweek.com/topic/call-duty" target="_blank">Call of Duty</a>, which just released its tenth installment, Ghosts, to millions of devoted fans.</p>
<p>
Some of these devotees make a living playing for the NFL, MLB, NHL, NBA and major league soccer when they&#39;re not trying for headshots amongst their friends. This ubiquitous audience is at the core of a partnership between COD parent Activision and startup OverDog, which developed a mobile app to allow fans to play COD online with professional athletes.</p>
<p>
&ldquo;Adrian Peterson is going to play Call of Duty this week anyway,&rdquo; noted Steve Berneman, CEO and co-founder of startup OverDog. Other athletes among the 300 participating are starting pitcher David Price, former NHL player Jeremy Roenick, the NBA&#39;s Patrick Beverly and soccer&rsquo;s Kei Kamara. Berneman admits that not all on the roster are as well-known as these players; it&#39;s a mix of rookies and all-stars.</p>
<p>
&ldquo;Athletes are very competitive, and they see it as another way to compete with each other and the people around them,&rdquo; added Dario Raciti, director of Zero Code, OMD&rsquo;s gaming specialty shop, which led planning for the campaign.</p>
<p>
When an athlete wants to play a game, he sends out a challenge via the app, which comes through as push notifications to those who&rsquo;ve downloaded it. Fans can accept the challenge and the app randomly selects a winner, who is then thrust into live gameplay with their sports heroes.</p>
<p>
And yes, through the multiplayer platforms of Xbox and PlayStation, the fan can ask the athlete absolutely anything.</p>
<p>
&ldquo;We listen in on these, and the first 30 seconds of the conversation are about the game, then the next couple minutes are stuff you&rsquo;d ask a pro athlete,&rdquo; Berneman said. &ldquo;Once we get through that, it&rsquo;s like a couple of 25-year-olds playing Call of Duty.&rdquo;</p>
<p>
Peterson is a team player in more than one sense of the word. Not only is he participating on the gameplay front, but also joins four other NFL running backs&mdash;Marshawn Lynch, Willis McGahee, Jamaal Charles and Mark Ingram&mdash;in a new promotional video for the app, launching today. That video shows the football stars playing Ghosts with an actual fan, named Drew, who was organically contacted through the app.</p>
<p>
The athletes involved have also been promoting the effort on Twitter, which itself plays a huge marketing role in its longstanding popularity with athletes and their fans.&nbsp;&nbsp;</p>
<p>
So how did a startup like OverDog, which at first struggled to get its beta funding through Kickstarter (the resulting press helped it get some VC backing), manage to get such famous and expensive faces in its promo?</p>
<p>
Berneman wouldn&rsquo;t disclose the campaign&rsquo;s budget, but said OverDog got the athletes at a &quot;significantly less expensive&quot; rate than your typical endorsement arrangement.</p>
<p>
It&rsquo;s for the same reason, he said, that the core idea was so appealing in the first place: the pro athletes are already playing the game. &ldquo;Rather than sign a large promotional deal, what we organize is a game these guys play at their house,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;We work really hard to make sure it&rsquo;s not hard work.&rdquo;</p>
<p>
Here&#39;s a look at the first spot, released today:</p>
<p>
<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="367" src="//www.youtube.com/embed/dibl0hviezM?list=UUilQhEuP5Cvtp-WNCgmiVaA" width="652"></iframe></p>
TechnologyActivisionAdrian PetersonAppsCall of DutyCall of Duty: GhostsMelissa HoffmannGamingJamaal CharlesMark IngramMarshawn LynchMlbNflNhlOnline GamingOverDogPlaystationSports MarketingWillis McGaheeXboxMon, 25 Nov 2013 18:53:00 +0000154097 at http://www.adweek.comMegan Fox, Frank Sinatra and Las Vegas Give Call of Duty Trailer a Cool New Lookhttp://www.adweek.com/news/advertising-branding/megan-fox-frank-sinatra-take-las-vegas-cool-new-look-call-duty-ads-153452
Tim Nudd<img src="http://www.adweek.com/files/imagecache/node-detail/news_article/megan-fox-call-of-duty-hed-2013.jpg"> <p>
<strong>IDEA</strong>: What happens here, stays here &hellip; particularly if the city crumbles to the ground.</p>
<p>
72andSunny travels to a bombed-out Las Vegas for its latest jaw-dropping, live-action trailer, breaking Nov. 2, for Activision&#39;s Call of Duty. This spot, for Ghosts, the 10th game in the franchise, marks the fourth year of the theme &quot;There&#39;s a soldier in all of us.&quot; The ads have been creatively stellar for years&mdash;from TBWA&#39;s 2010 Black Ops spot with Kobe Bryant and Jimmy Kimmel through 72&#39;s trailers for <a href="/node/136393">Modern Warfare 3,</a> with Jonah Hill and Sam Worthington, and <a href="/node/144868">Black Ops II,</a> with Robert Downey Jr. They&#39;ve also been enormously effective, winning 2013&#39;s Grand Effie and Adweek&#39;s Brand Genius award for Activision CMO Tim Ellis.</p>
<p>
The new spot, &quot;Epic Night Out,&quot; follows the same general creative path as the earlier spot&mdash;unexpected celebrity cameo, potent music, flashy action that mimics the emotion of playing the game&mdash;but brings new insights, new toys and a new tone supplied largely by a Frank Sinatra soundtrack.</p>
<p>
&quot;Each year we want to shock and awe our audience and the world,&quot; said Ellis. &quot;And we feel like this is the best work we&#39;ve ever done.&quot;</p>
<p>
<img alt="" src="/files/adfreak/images/3/COD-1.jpg" style="width: 652px; height: 367px;" /></p>
<p>
<strong>COPYWRITING</strong>: Squads play a key role in Ghosts, emphasizing teamwork. So, the script for the spot quickly became about camaraderie.</p>
<p>
Early on, the creatives stumbled upon the Sinatra track &quot;I&#39;m Gonna Live Till I Die,&quot; which put them in a Rat Pack mood. Part of the game is set in Vegas as well. So those two things &quot;almost led us to the storyline,&quot; said 72andSunny chief creative officer Glenn Cole. &quot;It will be a night out in Vegas, you and your buddies having a great time. Crazy shit happens, and you wake up the next day and go, &#39;Holy hell, that was the best night of the year. Let&#39;s do that again!&#39; Which is just like playing Call of Duty with your friends.&quot;</p>
<p>
Indeed, in the spot, four friends race around Sin City, battling snipers, tanks and choppers before finding themselves in other parts of the world and beyond. (They&#39;re briefly transported to the Arctic and to outer space, among other locales.) At one point, on a Caracas rooftop, they run into Megan Fox. &quot;How you doing?&quot; one of the guys asks, acting cool. She pushes him aside and blasts a hovering robot out of the sky. &quot;Great. Thanks for asking,&quot; she replies. (That&#39;s almost the sum total of dialogue.)</p>
<p>
The Hangover was clearly a reference point. Said Cole: &quot;The story arc of ending up at [Mike] Tyson&#39;s house at 5 in the morning and some crazy shit&#39;s going on&mdash;our equivalent of that in the spot is, &#39;Wow, are we in space having a gunfight? Awesome!&#39; &quot;</p>
<p>
The scripting of individual scenes involved &quot;a matrix of things,&quot; he added. They had locations in mind that would capture the scale and scope of the game. They had specific vehicles and guns they wanted to highlight. &quot;And then, we were looking to build personality moments and connections between our guys,&quot; said Cole.</p>
<p>
At the end, the four guys walk triumphantly in front of fountains at a scarred casino as the tagline appears: &quot;There&#39;s a soldier in all of us.&quot;</p>
<p>
<img alt="" src="/files/adfreak/images/3/COD-2.jpg" style="width: 652px; height: 367px;" /></p>
<p>
<strong>FILMING/TALENT</strong>: Director James Mangold shot the spot over seven days, re-creating Vegas on the Warner Bros. lot and filming the Arctic scenes at an airport in Burbank, Calif., and the space footage on a blue screen.</p>
<p>
For the friends, the agency looked for a mix of ethnicities and types&mdash;alpha male, prankster, etc. &quot;We thought about the pros and cons of having four guys you know, or four guys you don&#39;t know,&quot; said Cole. &quot;I think an important question with these [ads] is: At what point might a famous personality overshadow the story we&#39;re trying to tell, or the connection we&#39;re trying to make? This year it&#39;s four guys you probably haven&#39;t seen, even though they&#39;ve had roles in Hollywood.&quot;</p>
<p>
Fox&#39;s scene is all of 10 seconds long, but she&#39;s the first woman to be the lead celebrity in a Call of Duty spot. &quot;She&#39;s fun, she&#39;s sexy, she&#39;s cool, she&#39;s badass, she&#39;s recognizable around the world. And the role was fun,&quot; said Cole.</p>
<p>
&quot;Video gaming isn&#39;t just about dudes today,&quot; said Ellis, adding that he generally looks for &quot;unpredictable&quot; stars who don&#39;t do a lot of ads.</p>
<p>
<img alt="" src="/files/adfreak/images/3/COD-3.jpg" style="width: 652px; height: 367px;" /></p>
<p>
<strong>SOUND</strong>: The Sinatra song has &quot;a fun, swaggery, Ocean&#39;s Eleven feeling,&quot; said Cole. It&#39;s lyrically perfect, yet more stylish and less aggressive than past COD soundtracks with AC/DC and the Rolling Stones. &quot;Let&#39;s face it, Frank is cool. He&#39;s timeless,&quot; said Ellis. Sound design was crucial, too, to make the earth shake and the guns blaze.</p>
<p>
<strong>MEDIA</strong>: The spot breaks as a :90 this weekend on Saturday Night Live and will also run as a :60. Other Ghosts ads this year have included a teaser trailer, an Eminem music video and, for the first time, a minicampaign called &quot;Call of Duty Time&quot; celebrating consumer excitement around the launch.</p>
<p>
&quot;Even people who will never buy our game, I want them talking about our advertising and our product,&quot; said Ellis. &quot;That is the way you build a cultural juggernaut that sustains itself year after year.&quot;</p>
<p>
<strong>THE SPOT</strong>:</p>
<p>
<object height="367" width="652"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/MNxh7umVOZ0?version=3&amp;hl=en_US" /><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true" /><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always" /><embed allowfullscreen="true" allowscriptaccess="always" height="367" src="http://www.youtube.com/v/MNxh7umVOZ0?version=3&amp;hl=en_US" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" width="652"></embed></object></p>
<p>
<strong>CREDITS</strong><br />
Client: Activision Publishing<br />
Product: Call of Duty: Ghosts<br />
Spot: &quot;Epic Night Out&quot;<br />
CEO: Eric Hirshberg<br />
EVP, Chief Marketing Officer: Tim Ellis<br />
SVP, Consumer Marketing: Todd Harvey<br />
Sr. Director, Consumer Marketing: Matt Small<br />
Director, Consumer Marketing: Carolyn Wang<br />
Consumer Marketing Manager: Karen Starr<br />
Associate Consumer Marketing Manager: Andrew Drake &nbsp; </p>
<p>
Agency: 72andSunny <br />
Chief Creative Officer: Glenn Cole<br />
Executive Creative Director: Frank Hahn <br />
Creative Director, Writer: Josh Fell <br />
Creative Director, Designer: Rey Andrade <br />
Lead Writer: Jed Cohen<br />
Lead Designer: Jeremy Wirth <br />
Writer: Matt Spicer<br />
Designer: Will Lindberg<br />
Chief Production Officer: Tom Dunlap<br />
Director of Film Production: Sam Baerwald<br />
Executive Producer: Dan Ruth<br />
Senior Producer: Eric Rasco <br />
Director of Business Affairs: Christine Claussen<br />
Business Affairs manager: Jennifer Jahinian<br />
Group Brand Director: Mike Parseghian<br />
Brand Director: Luke Lamson <br />
Brand Manager: John Moloney<br />
Brand Coordinator: Justin Gonzaga <br />
Production Company: Aero Film<br />
Director: James Mangold<br />
DP: Kramer Morgenthau<br />
Executive Producer: Lance O&#39;Connor<br />
Line Producer: Mary Church</p>
<p>
Editorial: Union Editorial<br />
Editor: Jono Griffith<br />
Jr. Editor: Jason Lucas <br />
Executive Producer/President: Michael Raimondi <br />
Senior Producer: Joe Ross</p>
<p>
Visual Effects: The Mill Los Angeles<br />
Exec Producer: Sue Troyan<br />
Producer: Leighton Greer<br />
Coordinator: Antonio Hardy<br />
Creative Director: Robert Sethi<br />
2D Lead Artists: Chris Knight / Daniel Thuresson<br />
3D Lead Artists: Felix Urquiza - Assets / Chris Bayol - Lighting / Jacob Bergman &ndash; Animation / Ashraf Ghoniem &ndash; FX / Thom Price &ndash; Matte Painting<br />
Colorist: Adam Scott</p>
<p>
Production Designer: Todd Cherniawsky</p>
<p>
Mix: Lime Audio post<br />
Mixer: Rohan Young<br />
Assistant: Jeff Malen</p>
<p>
Sound Design: The Formosa Group<br />
Supervising Sound Designer: Per Hallberg</p>
Advertising & Branding72andsunnyActivisionCall of DutyGamingThe SpotTim NuddAgencyTue, 29 Oct 2013 02:04:05 +0000153452 at http://www.adweek.comEminem's 'Survival' Music Video Is a Four-and-a-Half Minute Ad for Call of Duty: Ghostshttp://www.adweek.com/adfreak/eminems-survival-music-video-four-and-half-minute-ad-call-duty-ghosts-152997
Tim Nudd<img src="http://www.adweek.com/files/imagecache/node-detail/blogs/eminem-cod-hed-2013.jpg"> <p>
<a href="/node/152286">As we&#39;ve mentioned before,</a> Activision and Interscope brought together two of its juggernaut franchises&mdash;Call of Duty and Eminem&mdash;for a cross-marketing push promoting the game&#39;s new Ghosts title and the rapper&#39;s upcoming album MMLP2 (short for Marshall Mathers LP 2). Today, the music video rolled out for Eminem&#39;s song &quot;Survival,&quot; which is on the Call of Duty: Ghosts soundtrack. The video, which is a collaboration with Activision agency 72andSunny, is basically a four-and-a-half minute commercial for the game, with footage from it sprinkled throughout. (Ant Farm supplied the gameplay footage for the spot.) Eminem worked with Activision in 2009 on Modern Warfare 2 and in 2010 on Black Ops. For much more on the partnership, check out Sam Thielman&#39;s earlier story, linked above. For the video, see below (warning: explicit lyrics).</p>
<p>
<object height="367" width="652"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/NlmezywdxPI?version=3&amp;hl=en_US" /><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true" /><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always" /><embed allowfullscreen="true" allowscriptaccess="always" height="367" src="http://www.youtube.com/v/NlmezywdxPI?version=3&amp;hl=en_US" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" width="652"></embed></object></p>
Advertising & Branding72andsunnyActivisionEminemGamingInterscopeTim NuddCreativeAgencyTue, 08 Oct 2013 18:44:48 +0000152997 at http://www.adweek.comGeniuses Brand and Grand [Video]http://www.adweek.com/news/advertising-branding/geniuses-brand-and-grand-video-152724
<img src="http://www.adweek.com/files/imagecache/node-detail/news_article/screen_shot_2013-09-26_at_9.22.29_am.png"> <p>
At New York&#39;s Capitale, Dove&#39;s Grand Brand Genius Fernando Machado, Activision&#39;s Tim Ellis, Southern Comfort&#39;s Mark Bacon, Samsung&#39;s Todd Pendleton, Beats by Dre&#39;s Omar Johnson and the Warby Parker duo Neil Blumenthal and David Gilboa are among those explaining what it means to be a Brand Genius.</p>
Advertising & BrandingActivisionBeats by DreBrand GeniusDoveGrand Brand GeniusSix QuestionsSouthern ComfortWarby ParkerThu, 26 Sep 2013 13:55:39 +0000152724 at http://www.adweek.comWhat Makes a Brand Genius?http://www.adweek.com/news/advertising-branding/what-makes-brand-genius-152596
James Cooper<p>
<img alt="" src="/files/brand-genius-editor-01-2013.jpg" style="width: 323px; height: 587px; float: right; margin-left: 10px; margin-right: 10px;" />True story: When we relaunched Adweek three years ago, we also set out to recast our events. First up was Marketer of the Year, which had stood the test of time but was in want of renewed energy and an infusion of verve.</p>
<p>
At the same time, staff writer Robert Klara was dazzling with his new <a href="http://www.adweek.com/topic/perspective" target="_blank">Perspective column</a>. His deep-dive reporting and institutional knowledge of brands ranging from <a href="/node/141150">Chanel No. 5</a> to <a href="/node/142941">La-Z-Boy recliners</a> was impressive enough to warrant Robert getting the ultimate newsroom courtesy: a nickname. In his case, it was &ldquo;<a href="http://ww.adweek.com/brand-genius" target="_blank">Brand Genius</a>.&rdquo;</p>
<p>
I suppose it would be more dramatic to say that Robert&rsquo;s handle transferred to a full-blown awards program and ceremony after long, tense meetings and focus groups, but that&rsquo;s not the case. We liked the name and settled on it after a few instant message exchanges. A franchise was born on the fly, and now in its third year, Brand Genius has become a key tent pole for Adweek.</p>
<p>
We honor 10 brands and their chief marketing executives who have pushed well past convention to deliver breakthrough branding initiatives for their companies. Some represent large companies (Samsung, Volkswagen) with a legacy of marketing excellence. Others are small and burgeoning (Warby Parker, Beats by Dr. Dre), but early on have proved deeply savvy in their approach to marketing in this social and fragmented world.</p>
<p>
With our Brand Visionary award, now in its second year, we honor prescient vision and a discipline of purpose, both of which are hallmarks of <a href="http://adweek.com/news-gallery/adweek-s-2013-brand-genius-awards-152581#brand-visionary-russell-simmons-1" target="_blank">this year&rsquo;s honoree Russell Simmons</a>, co-founder of Def Jam Records and a founding father and champion of rap and hip-hop, which would emerge as a genuine American art form and cultural force. Finally, we hold back one award, the Grand Brand Genius, chosen from our 10 winners, as the best of the bunch, to be revealed during our Brand Genius ceremony this Wednesday evening in New York during Advertising Week.</p>
<p>
The research behind all this takes months and represents a team effort by Adweek&rsquo;s editors, writers and designers. But the guy doing the heaviest lifting is Robert Klara, whose nickname we aptly borrowed to help shape our future.<br />
<br />
<a href="http://adweek.com/news-gallery/adweek-s-2013-brand-genius-awards-152581#intro" target="_blank">[View Adweek&#39;s 2013 Brand Geniuses]</a></p>
Advertising & BrandingActivisionBeats by Dr. DreBrand GeniusChobaniDick's Sporting GoodsJames CooperMagazine ContentNflRussell SimmonsSamsungSouthern ComfortVolkswagenWarby ParkerMon, 23 Sep 2013 02:18:54 +0000152596 at http://www.adweek.comCall of Duty: Ghosts Campaign Will Dovetail With Eminem's MMLP2http://www.adweek.com/news/advertising-branding/call-duty-ghosts-campaign-will-dovetail-eminems-mmlp2-152286
Sam Thielman<img src="http://www.adweek.com/files/imagecache/node-detail/news_article/cod-ghosts-chasm-ambush-hed-2013.jpg"> <p>
November is an important month for Activision&mdash; on the fifth, Call of Duty: Ghosts lands with video gamers. But it&#39;s also the day Eminem&#39;s MMLP2 (short for The Marshall Mathers LP 2) comes out, and now that release is tied to the Call of Duty franchise. Both releases are big swings for their respective publishers&mdash;Activision and Interscope&mdash;and since both appeal to a young male demographic, the companies decided to sync up parts of their campaigns to make Eminem&#39;s presence in Activision&#39;s marketing more than a traditional celebrity endorsement.</p>
<p>
Call of Duty has a long history of using big names to help boost the franchise in the run-up to the latest iteration&#39;s street date; last year saw no less a movie star than Robert Downey, Jr.<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WRACXFN7ds8" target="_blank"> promoting Black Ops 2</a>. But this year&#39;s campaign is a bit different, in that it makes strategic sense for two totally different media properties launching on the same day. As Activision CMO Tim Ellis puts it, &quot;You don&#39;t want to feel the money changing hands.&quot;</p>
<p>
&quot;There&#39;s no doubt that Eminem and his team are benefiting Call of Duty, and there&#39;s no doubt that Call of Duty is benefiting Eminem,&quot; Ellis said. Gamers, he observed, are not a terribly forgiving bunch when it comes to marketing campaigns. &quot;They would have shredded this partnership if it didn&#39;t feel organic and true,&quot; he said, but Eminem worked with the company in 2009 for Modern Warfare 2, and again the next year for Black Ops, so it&#39;s unsurprising that the rapper&#39;s song Survival was featured in an ad for the game last month. It&#39;s clearly a partnership that has worked in the past for the franchise, and now it&#39;s one that will make the hip-hop star a primary voice for the new game. There&#39;s plenty of crossover between Eminem fans and COD fans, and enough folks familiar with the one but not the other to make the partnership worthwhile.</p>
<p>
The integration is beginning in earnest today. Activision is announcing that, if you pre-order Call of Duty: Ghosts through gaming retail juggernaut Gamestop, you&#39;ll get a download code for a discounted copy of MMLP2 with a bonus track on it. During the game itself, Ellis said, you&#39;ll hear music from the new album. (Activision wouldn&#39;t tell Adweek how the music would be used, just that it would be in there.) And there&#39;s more on the music side, too. &quot;We are shooting a special video for the song we&#39;re working on with Call of Duty&mdash;Survival&mdash;and it&#39;s going to be unique content put together with Activision and their team,&quot;&nbsp;Interscope&#39;s Steve Berman said. Berman wouldn&#39;t say whether the COD-branded video would get airtime on the major music video channels&mdash;Activision has long-standing relationships at Viacom&mdash;but Ellis said that it would definitely be the only official music video for the track.</p>
<p>
&quot;We were always targeting for the album to be in the November timeframe, and when we were fortunate enough to get into a relationship with Activision around Call of Duty, the timing really synced up,&quot; Berman said. &quot;Call of Duty is such a loud franchise in the marketplace.&quot; It&#39;s an important year for COD, too&mdash;the new game will be the first in the series on the new generation of gaming hardware (the PS4 and the XBox One).</p>
<p>
Eminem&#39;s campaign for the new record has already grabbed attention, and not just with for its presence in Call of Duty. Interscope put 30 seconds&#39; worth of the first single, Berzerk, in a spot during the VMAs. Beats Electronics, a company run by Dr. Dre and Interscope-Geffen-A&amp;M Records chairman Jimmy Iovine, <a href="http://www.adweek.com/adfreak/twerking-hand-feeds-you-beats-tees-miley-cyrus-152061" target="_blank">has incorporated plenty of its (and other Universal Music) artists into its ads</a>, notably Nicki Minaj and Robin Thicke, and animated versions of its latest product are voiced by hip-hop artists including Eminem himself. There&#39;s an upcoming integration with ESPN, too.</p>
<p>
For Activision, Eminem&#39;s (and Universal/Interscope&#39;s) presence in the music world is an invaluable tool for reaching both consumers and media that don&#39;t necessarily cover video games. &quot;He&#39;s definitely helped us cross over into verticals in the music industry we&#39;d never have reached without him,&quot; said Ellis. &quot;Without Marshall [Mathers, aka Eminem], we would never have gotten into Spin, Pitchfork, The Source.&quot;</p>
<p>
(Of course, forced synergies sometimes backfire. Eminem&#39;s peculiar appearance during ESPN&#39;s coverage of the Notre Dame-Michigan game Saturday may have left football fans wondering who was that <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kTVVGqTntp4" target="_blank">slack-jawed yokel</a> being interviewed by Brent Musburger and Kirk Herbstreit.)</p>
<p>
Eminem, Ellis said, offered &quot;shared interest, not borrowed interest&quot; with a large fanbase. &quot;We often have partners in most of our launches, and we&#39;re very careful in how we choose most of those partners,&quot; he said. &quot;First day and first week is incredibly important to us in terms of our product launch.&quot; And Activision has usually been very successful by any measure with those first few days&mdash;last year, COD made $1 billion in 15 days.</p>
Advertising & BrandingActivisionBeats by DreBeats ElectronicsCall of DutyEminemSam ThielmanInterscopeMTV VMAsTim EllisMon, 09 Sep 2013 07:00:02 +0000152286 at http://www.adweek.com